2025 Akimblog Critics' Picks

For Akimbo's round-up of the Akimblog's critics' picks for 2025, I was asked to provide a highlight from the previous year. Against the backdrop of a negative news cycle, I selected the positive note struck by the Ottawa Art Gallery's Grotto: The Bill Staubi Collection.

Grotto: The Bill Staubi Collection, 2025, installation view at the OAG (photo: Rémi Thériault)

Curated by Sam Loewen and Caro Stewart, the exhibition consists of works donated by a local art collector to the permanent collection at OAG. Bill Staubi’s support for emerging artists and queer artists in particular will have a lasting impact on the way art history in Ottawa can be told. The gallery has also established the Bill Staubi Acquisition Fund, furthering institutional support for emerging artists from the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community. One of Staubi’s most recent purchases on view, Blooming Together from 2024, is by the artist Saivani Sanassy (Ubuntu Art House). 

Adorning Sanassy’s piece, replete with the colours of the non-binary pride flag, the phrase “We Have Always Been Here” echoed within another highlight of the arts calendar in Ottawa in 2025: a major retrospective exhibition of the trans artist Erica Rutherford at the National Gallery of Canada. You can read the full text of my post here on the December 18 Akimblog.